Last month, Avid finally introduced the updated line of interfaces for Pro Tools HD systems. While they may not appear to be revolutionary in the manner that it seems many people were hoping for I think that they are a solid base to move forward from. Let’s look at them a little closer.

Go to his blog to read the rest of his comments. He has written a simple clear description of each of them and stayed away from specs. Thank you Ceri.

New Cedar DNS ONE software is officially launched
enjoy the audiosuite and the ability to use on PPC mac
Update is free (take note in Israel)

‘tom_lowe’ asked…

Audiosuite is good, but why on earth effectively downgrade their code and bloat it to make it PPC compatible!? Seems a little backwards to me since this is the time developers are stopping PPC support. Putting PPC code in there along side Intel code means it needs to be Universal binary, not just x86 binary, meaning there is more code. Apple and Adobe and now Avid with PT 8.0.3 dropped PPC support so their code could be leaner and more efficient. You can’t optimise code for Intel AND keep PPC support. Supporting both will lead to compromises in the code and the efficiency of it. It’s one or the other. CEDAR started with no PPC support, and then added it, which is basically going against the tide of every other developer.

‘bad jitter’ suggested…

Umh… I guess enough customers asked for it?

‘tom_lowe’ replied…

Lots of people wanted Pro Tools 8.0.3 and Apple’s Snow Leopard to work on PPC – but they didn’t. It’s pointless supporting old processors (the last PPCs are now 5+ years old). Want new software? Buy new hardware.

‘airon’ posted…

I suppose enough folks spending big dollars on one plugin made it worth their while. What’s the performance like on G5 systems ?

MIKEROPHONICS responded to this debate with some answers from the horses mouth…

The software designer Dave has emailed me a few answers for you after seeing this post…

1: We have not downgraded our code. The universal binary contains two distinct versions of the DSP code, one for Intel processors, and one for the PPC. The Intel version makes extensive use of its parallel arithmetic instructions (SSE2). This optimisation almost doubles the efficiency of the Intel code. The PPC’s parallel instructions (AltiVec) do not support double precision arithmetic, so I couldn’t use them.

2: Features: We have only added features, specifically Audiosuite & PPC, but also a couple of helper buttons to set all faders to 0dB and -24dB. We’ve also improved how touch mode works if you are using a DNS3000.

3: Performance: The DNS One code is actually very compact and efficient, with very little housekeeping waste. It takes about 25 MFLOPS per channel for 44.1kHz audio. We could easily get a hundred channels of DNS One running on a dual core 2.4GHz Pentium machine. Obviously overall speed depends on your CPU and clock speed, but in general the PPC version is going to be about half as efficient as the Intel version running on an equivalent chip.

So there you go

‘tom_lowe’ replied…

Thanks for that, Mike. Good to know. I still think PPC support is silly, but that’s just my take on things. Will be interesting to see where DNS one goes once they add SSE3 and 4 instructions. Sorry if I made you feel you had to defend the plug-in, I know you love it, and having used it, I know why you love it.

MIKEROPHONICS responded…

Not defending necessarily, just a conduit of information. PPC is not an issue for me, but it is for many. So I hope the many are very happy. I wouldn’t know one slice of code from another – nor do I care to. I just push the shiny levers up and down…..  Personally I rave about this company because

1) the quality of their products
2) the way they treat their customers
3) they are very nice people

but then I am just a cynical old opinionated dubbing mixer so what do I know?

‘Brandonx1′ asked…

Can you email the developer and ask him to map the new buttons onto controllers like the pro control. This are almost useless without being mapped to a button on a controller. I’m not going to take my hands off the controller ad mouse around for a button.

MIKEROPHONICS replied…

will do – great idea. I have my pc in alt fader flip to control my cedar faders, and my fader pack for normal fader use

‘Brandonx1′ added…

I do the same thing but I’d like to have a dedicated controller for the cedar. I must spend 2 hours a day flipping my faders back and forth.

Looking at getting one of these and offloading my hardware boxes. Anybody care to weigh in on which to buy? The Neyrinck or Minnetonka version.

Mike Aiton posted…

Just a thought, but if you have the Dolby Audio Tool blue box, dont’t let go yet. The problem that I see with the software encode/decode solutions is that you can’t listen to your downmix with the metadata that you are encoding with. In the Uk on the Sky plaform, most viewers hear the downmixed 5.1 to 2.0 (as they don’t have a 5.1 decoder) so it is vital to be able to hear this. The network doesn’t transmit the LtRt that you sweated cobs over and loving put in your second programe audio on ch 7&8.. That said, I have passed this observation to Paul Neyrinck and he is “smarter than the average bear”, so I am sure a solution will be forth comming.

quadraphonics added…

I have tried both the Minnetonka and the Neyrinck software Dolby-E solutions, after using the hardware for a while and ended up purchasing the Neyrinck software. It was exceptionally easy to work with and the plug in (both encoder and decoder) worked just like the hardware – just faster. We have done well over 100 shows since we got this software. If you have any questions about how it performed in our workflow, I would be more than happy to help.

laki replied…

Thanks Randall! Tried both demos and came to the same conclusion.

Anyone used this? How about sound quality degeneration due to compression?

Well Mike Aiton has posted this on the DUC here…

I had been using file chute (on recommendation from Drew) to send my clients files, with some good success.

Those jolly nice people at Source Elements have just released Source Zip which is a fab new utility for ziping sessions. It retains all meta data and gives you several options on file compression, mp4 lossy or apple lossless. The Apple lossless is MUCH more efficient than the apple right click archive utilty. The MP4 versions get crazy small (trying to sound American here and work brilliantly for remote monitoring when recording with Source Connect and controlling both sessions from one end.

The result is a self extracting file – so no software for the remote end.
Highly recommended – a no brainer for $48

Mick, I hope that answers your question.

“In order to better serve you, Waves would like to learn more about your user experience. By completing a short survey, you can help us better understand and meet your needs as a user of our audio technologies. We truly appreciate your input and value your participation.”

However I found the questions too restrictive and led me to give them the answers they wanted to hear rather than find out what I thought. I appreciate that surveys are very hard to construct but the options for answers were too black and white.

Ilok is the best system out there but it isn’t perfect. I do find it a pain to have dongles attached to my computer but the portability of assets is very convenient. Ideally I would prefer to be able to choose either hard disk authorisation or iLok, which Waves took away. This is because I prefer not to have an iLok attached to my laptop based system as I have to carry a very valuable iLok around with me and then it is sticking out of my computer which uses up one of the USB sockets. Yes I can use a hub, but that is yet another thing to carry about with me, all of which makes a portable system progressively less portable.